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Connor McDavid’s case to win his fourth Hart Trophy
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Photo credit: Sergei Belski-Imagn Images
Golden Hockey
Apr 16, 2026, 13:00 EDTUpdated: Apr 16, 2026, 14:11 EDT
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The 2025-26 NHL season has featured some of the most compelling award races in recent memory, and the Hart Memorial Trophy is near the top of that list.
Once again, Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid is front and centre in the conversation for hockey’s most prestigious individual award, along with Nathan MacKinnon and Nikita Kucherov.
McDavid leads the league in scoring, but isn’t the betting favourite, despite being a Hart winner in 2016-17, 2020-21, and 2022-23. Bet365 lists MacKinnon as the odds-on favourite at -105, with McDavid at +115 and Kucherov at +650. 
All three players are deserving of recognition for a fantastic season, and Macklin Celebrini gets a shoutout, too, for nipping at their heels in just his second season. With that said, let’s take a deeper look and see where McDavid stacks up compared to the competition.

Special teams dominance

The true separator for McDavid in this year’s Hart race is in his special teams impact.
The Oilers have the top-ranked power play unit this season at 30.1 per cent, and McDavid is the main driver of its success. He leads the league in power play points with 52, a whopping 22 more than MacKinnon and 12 more than Kucherov.
McDavid is essentially an automatic zone entry when the Oilers drop the puck back to him in stride. Once set up, his constant movement in the offensive zone creates multiple different looks for penalty killers to track. Add his elite passing ability to that mix, and he becomes nearly impossible to contain.
Jockeying with the Oilers for the best power play over the past decade has been Kucherov’s Tampa Bay Lightning. This season was a down year, however, as they fell to the middle of the pack. Kucherov is still brilliant, but they’ve relied more on point shots from Darren Raddysh, as some of their other weapons haven’t been as efficient this season.
Sitting all the way down at 27th in the league is the Avalanche, who scored on just 17.4 percent of their power plays. It’s not all on him, but as the best player on the top unit, MacKinnon bears some responsibility for the team’s lack of success with the man advantage.
It took a lot longer than expected for a player of MacKinnon’s calibre to start producing on the power play, but it’s worth noting there’s been some improvement down the stretch. Just not enough to come close to McDavid’s impact throughout the season.
Shifting to the defensive side of things, McDavid is the only one who kills penalties out of the league’s top three players. And that’s for good reason — he’s absolutely lethal on the PK. His quickness and anticipation not only put pressure on opposing players, but also pose a significant threat to score shorthanded.
The Oilers’ goal share goes from 6.7 percent to 22 percent when McDavid is on the penalty kill. He more than triples the units’ effectiveness. The power-kill that McDavid creates can’t be replicated by anyone else on the team, nor by many across the league. 
It’s a natural instinct to hold even strength play in higher regard than special teams, since it’s the most common game state. Still, getting elite results on both sides of the special teams units is a rare achievement that we shouldn’t downplay. The goals all count the same after all.

Even strength play

Now we get into the area where McDavid’s case in the Hart conversation appears to be the shakiest: Even strength. Not because he hasn’t been brilliant, but because MacKinnon has been an absolute monster at even strength this season.
At five-on-five, MacKinnon leads the league in points with 75, and ranks second in goals with 31. He’s developed fantastic chemistry with Martin Necas, who, along with Cale Makar, can create a terrifying combination of speed and skill that doubles down on MacKinnon’s best attributes. The result? Colorado has a preposterous plus-58 goal differential in MacKinnon’s five-on-five minutes this season.
Kucherov and McDavid still tilt the ice significantly, but they haven’t enjoyed quite the same level of dominance at even strength as MacKinnon. Production and goal differential don’t tell the full story, though, especially when you consider how different the environment is around each of these players.
Everything from coaching to linemates, depth, and even goaltending has been maximized in Colorado this season to create the ideal environment for their superstar. With respect to his defensive game, which has been good, MacKinnon wouldn’t have that incredible five-on-five goal differential if Scott Wedgewood and Mackenzie Blackwood hadn’t combined for a .930 save percentage in his minutes. 
Now, compare that with the goaltenders in Edmonton, who have only mustered an .889 save percentage in McDavid’s minutes. The gap in goaltending quality between the Oilers and Avalanche this season is vast and accounts for a fair bit of the difference in results between the two superstars.
On top of poor goaltending, McDavid also had to contend with poor finishing from his teammates. The Oilers shot 10.4 percent in McDavid’s minutes, while MacKinnon and Kucherov enjoyed 12.3 and 14.3 per cent on-ice shooting percentage, respectively.
Those low shooting percentages certainly aren’t a reflection of McDavid’s playmaking either. Passing microstats from All Three Zones confirm that he still put his teammates in prime scoring positions all season long.
The big three all rank right near the top of the league in all passing categories, but out of McDavid’s three most common linemates, Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Matt Savoie, only Hyman has a shooting percentage above 10 percent. By comparison, MacKinnon’s linemates, Martin Necas and Artturi Lehkonen, both shoot over 15 per cent at even strength, and the same goes for Kucherov’s most common linemates in Brandon Hagel and Brayden Point.
It’s fair to say that MacKinnon is the most dominant player this season at five-on-five. However, when you consider the quality of teammates McDavid has to work with, he’s still had an incredibly impressive impact at even strength. 
Individual metrics
Now that we’ve discussed McDavid’s impact both at five-on-five and on special teams, I want to dedicate a section to a few key metrics that stand out to me. Leading the league in points is a strong starting point in the Hart Trophy conversation, but taking it a step further by looking at the percentage of team goals players were involved in gives us a fantastic measurement of how valuable they were to their teams.
Nearly half of Edmonton’s goals have involved the captain. That’s an incredible accomplishment on the team that opened the season as one of the Stanley Cup favourites. The extent to which he carried the Oilers was even more pronounced when Leon Draisaitl went down with an injury late in the season.
In the 14 games without Draisaitl, he has 11 goals and 23 points, leading the Oilers to a solid 8-4-2 record during a crucial late-season push.
It’s not just the volume of production that’s impressive with McDavid, though. It’s how much heavy lifting he does to make those goals happen. He transports the puck up ice, leading the league in entries this season. Then, once in the offensive zone, he attacks the slot with nearly double the frequency of anyone else.
In an era where teams are increasingly thoughtful about where they produce their offence, he is simply the best at getting the puck to the most dangerous area on the ice, whether by passing or skating.
His assertiveness in driving the puck to the slot is partially driven by his speed, which reached new highs this season.
McDavid is playing the game at a different pace than anyone else in the league. He has more than twice as many 22-plus MPH speed bursts as the next closest player Owen Tippett. Other Hart Trophy contenders don’t even come close to matching it.

The definition of most valuable

The definition of “most valuable” is fairly straightforward, yet it isn’t always applied consistently. Usually, the award goes to the best player in the league. But to some, the ability to truly carry a team is the mark of a worthy Hart Trophy winner. No matter which interpretation you prefer, McDavid checks all the boxes.
He leads the league in scoring. He’s involved in a larger share of his team’s offence than anyone else. He’s carried the Oilers through injuries to key players. He drives the best power play in hockey and contributes on the penalty kill. And he’s doing it while playing at a pace no one else can match.
Voter fatigue is often discussed in the NBA, where players like LeBron James have missed out on MVP awards despite deserving seasons. Familiarity can work against a player.
McDavid has set the standard for so long that it no longer feels novel, but that doesn’t make him any less valuable. I’m not saying MacKinnon and Kucherov aren’t perfectly deserving Hart winners, but if it doesn’t break McDavid’s way, I won’t be able to shake the feeling that voter fatigue has crept its way into the NHL.

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